


Naminé's Story

by Hooked_Wings



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Loneliness, Longing, M/M, New Heart, Tough Decisions, Wanting Forgiveness, What is right and what is wrong?, Yearning, confusing feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26229250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hooked_Wings/pseuds/Hooked_Wings
Summary: Written to help myself (and maybe readers too) better understand Naminé's character and what she went through.  Also written as a way to express her feelings growing for different boys from the Kingdom Hearts universe.Naminé is a conflicted, complex character with supernatural powers from Kingdom Hearts.
Relationships: Naminé & Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé & Riku Replica (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé/Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé/Riku Replica (Kingdom Hearts), Riku & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Kudos: 3





	1. The Beginning

I awoke in a town of Twilight. But I hadn’t seen it yet. I saw only whiteness, everything white. The entire room in this old mansion was changed--was it because of me? I looked down at my strange white dress and pale hair in the reflection of the window. 

My mind had questions, and I reached out with them. Echoes of answers came back, like little shells found along a seashore. I picked them up, one by one. Turning them over in my mind. A knowing came to me. Faces, names. Sora. Riku. The boys I was always with. No, that she was always with. I stared at my blonde reflection again. I wasn’t her, but I was her. A part of her. I searched the seashells of my mind, turning the Kairi-pink ones over and watching the moving reflections on the back. She always knew deep down she was capable of great things. But everything else took precedence. Playing, building a raft, silly things. Was I the part of her she never realized? Her true potential?

I needed a name. Kairi means water. I thought of the waves in my mind bringing the knowledge to me. Nami means “ocean wave”. But I’m not that simple. It’s strange. I feel this strong connection with others, but if I only now am beginning to exist, I suppose I’ve never truly met them. Despite that, I longed to reach out and see them again. Or for the first time? My hand reached out to touch the glass window in front of me, as if I could reach out and touch them too. Such a strong connection. Was this the bond Kairi has with them, her best friends? An unbreakable bond. And thus, standing in the waves of all these memories and thoughts washing over me, I found my name.

Naminé.

_(Namine means Unbreakable Bond in japanese, or literally “not broken up” or “ocean crest/wave”)._


	2. The Request

I know now I shouldn’t have done what I did. But I was so lonely.

After the Organization found me, what little hope I had of creating new friends was killed when they took me away and treated me like an unloved pet. Less than that. A tool. A means to their ends. I couldn’t blame them for wanting hearts. I wallowed in my despair. What use was it to resist? At least this gave me something to do, a purpose. And maybe one day, they really could have hearts too. 

But then I learned of a new development. Sora was here. Sora. Was. Here. I had only seen him in my mind. I drew him and the others every day. I obsessed over them. The feelings and happy memories from Kairi were like lifelines in this dismal existence. Sora. I felt something inside me leap at the thought of meeting him. Of seeing his face, his real face, moving with real emotions, his eyes lit up with happiness and wonderment like I was so fond of when we --no, when  _ she-- _ played with him on the beach. Was this feeling….hope? 

The tip of my crayon broke against the paper when he said his request. The man with the rose petals and cruel eyes. He wanted me to take apart Sora’s memories? I started to turn and protest, but what he said next stopped me in my tracks.

“Give him new ones of yourself. He could be your friend. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” He said as his glove gently spread out a small stack of drawings on the table, revealing the fantasies I had drawn of myself with Sora, Kairi, and Riku.

“There are other options, but they could all hurt Sora. You don’t want him to be hurt, do you? This way, no harm has to come to him at all. He’ll still be the same Sora. Except he will remember you instead. A Sora that’s just the same, but just remembers one girl instead of the other. That’s not so bad, now is it?”

His words made a new feeling well up inside me. What was this feeling? Longing? I thought I didn’t have a heart. Maybe somewhere inside me, a piece of one was starting to grow.

And this longing, it was more than I could take.


	3. Complications

I hung my head, my hands clenched on top of my knees with worry. I had finally met them. And they were fighting. Fighting...over me. This wasn’t what I wanted. How had things become so complicated, so quickly? 

I didn’t even look up when Axel’s corridor of darkness opened, and he strode into the room to pay me a visit. I was tired of all their visits. Their tauntings. Tired of everything.

“Does it hurt, Naminé?” he asked. “Watching your two childhood friends fight all because of you?” Of course it did. But his question was an interesting one. If I was a nobody, why did it hurt so much? Did I really have a heart? But my actions up until now showed that maybe, I was just as cruel and as heartless as the rest of them. How could I do this to Sora? Even so, part of me lept with joy inside each time one of the boys stood protectively in front of me, guarding me with their life. I couldn’t deny I also secretly enjoyed it.

“You have my sympathies, from the heart.” I glared up at him. I knew he had no heart. He had destroyed Vexen without a second thought. It was as easy to him as sitting on a rooftop with Roxas eating sea salt ice cream. Oh yes, I knew about them too. My mind wouldn’t stop bringing me new knowledge, washed up in little snippets and pieces of truths, revealed on the reflective sides of the seashells in my mind. At least Axel had a friend.

But Sora and replica Riku...even if their memories of me were fake, did the way they act towards me make them my friends too? My heart yearned for the answer to be yes. But it also ached with the wrongness of it all.


	4. New Feelings

She was chiding me again, belittling me, taunting me. I stared down at the floor. I didn’t want to hear her words. I heard the door open.

“Cut it out, Larxene.” Riku’s voice. But no, not Riku. The truth had washed up to me on the shore, and I had reached out to pluck the seashell of him from the waves. This Riku was a replica. An incomplete thing, a new heart, a friendless nothing, just like me. Yet here he was, defending me.

I heard his footsteps approach. It would have been better if I had met him the right way--the way normal friends meet. Maybe we could have been real friends. I didn’t dare look up at him. I was filled with shame. Every memory of me he had, I had placed there. Our friendship was a lie. I wished that it wasn’t.

“Naminé--she doesn’t want to remember Sora.” He said jealously. 

“Is that so?” The cruel Larxene asked.

He walked closer until he was standing right before me. I felt so torn. I wanted to reach out and hold him, comfort him, tell him that it was okay to be a broken doll, a half of a thing, just like me. That we could be broken together. But my shame overwhelmed me. My guilt weighed heavily in my heart.

His voice was softer now as he addressed me, “Don’t worry. Whatever’s hurting you, I’ll make it go away.”

Oh, Riku. If only you knew. 


	5. The Long Atonement

“Sora, I’m sorry. All this--it’s because of me.”

That’s what I had said to him. I reached out and touched the glass flower pod he slept in. He was right here, yet at the same time he was far away. The Sora I knew was ripped apart into pieces. I did that.

And Riku, no… the replica of Riku, he was gone. After learning his memories were all fake, he had left to wander the darkness. What answers would he find out there? My heart yearned for him. I wished he hadn’t gone away. I wished I had a chance to ask for forgiveness. Maybe when Sora wakes up, I could ask him.

Riku would come and go often from this mansion. I’d stare at him curiously. He was just like the replica of himself, but with a different heart. A heart that longed to see Sora again. I could tell how much he loved him. When he wasn’t out on his mission, he would be here in the mansion with me. No, not with me. My presence in the room couldn’t hold a candle to Sora. He would sit and eat his meal in a chair next to Sora’s pod. Once I overheard him talking to Sora when he didn’t know I was in the doorway. Or was he talking to himself? Oh, then I remembered. He could detect others from far away, their ‘scents’ he called it. So he did know I was here. He was just so preoccupied with Sora, that we spoke little. I suppose I wouldn’t have much to say anyway. The long days of concentration piecing Sora’s memories back together took all my focus, and left me weary and tired at the end of the day.

Then one day he brought a new girl to visit us. Xion. She looked like me, or rather she looked like Kairi. Another replica, another puppet. She had run away from the organization after meeting Riku a couple times. What had he said to make her doubt herself? Whatever it was, it worked. Xion was here now. She was so scared. I took her trembling hand in mine and led her to the flower pod. When she looked up at Sora, were those tears in her eyes?

It must be a hard thing, deciding whether to sacrifice all that you are, for another. As the days passed, I could see the decision weighing on her mind. 

“Going out to walk around Twilight Town again?” I would hear Riku ask.

“Yeah. It helps me think.” Xion would reply.

He would watch her from the upstairs hallway window leaving the mansion grounds. I would stare and watch him as he watched her, wondering what he was thinking. He was so kind. He could’ve easily defeated her with the strength he had now. He could have forced her to go back to Sora. But he didn’t. He wanted her to choose. With how much he missed his friend, how could he be so kind? Or was it that he had faith that she would do the right thing? Was it the right thing? I stared at the back of Riku, lingering before going back to my work on Sora’s memories. He looked just like him. But he wasn’t the replica I missed, the one I wanted to comfort and befriend. He was a whole person with a whole heart. A heart that belonged to Sora. The only comfort that I could bring to this Riku, was to finish my work. Wordlessly, I turned and went back to Sora’s chamber.

Then one day it happened. The memories I wasn’t able to collect and chain back together for Sora came flooding back. I felt their presence in the air as I worked. Something had happened. In my mind I walked along the beach searching for answers why. I reached out and plucked a seashell from the waves and turned it over. Roxas wept while holding her hand as she faded away. That girl...what was her name? I couldn’t remember anymore. 

“Such is the fate of a nobody.” I recalled the words of DiZ. He said things like that a lot. Maybe one day, I would be forgotten too.

I wandered farther on the beach in my mind, searching for the pink shells, the ones about Kairi. I turned one over in my palm. Kairi was staring out at the ocean, just as I was in my mind, mirroring me.  _ She’s thinking of him. Trying to remember his name. _

I’ll finish my work, I promised her. And when I do, you’ll remember everything. You’ll be able to see Sora again. Or, so I hoped.

I hit another snag in the process. Sora was still missing something. Roxas. His nobody. My heart ached. I had watched as Roxas had grown, made friends, became someone other than the memory-less shell of a nobody he started out as. My heart sank with the realization of what had to come next. DiZ’s words haunted my mind again, “Such is the fate of a nobody.” I stood from my chair and left the room, going to DiZ. I didn’t quite have it in me to tell Riku face to face, that he would have to do this again with Roxas. So I told DiZ. I waited in my room, spying on them by turning over the seashells in my mind one at a time.

I watched as DiZ told Riku what must be done, and I saw the firm resolve harden in Riku’s eyes. He turned and left without a word.  _ He’s going to search for Roxas _ , I realized.

Later Riku often would go consult Diz, who was busy building something--a data version of this town. DiZ always treated me like I was nothing, and wouldn’t answer my questions. So I found the answers myself as I reached out in my mind. It was a place to keep Roxas. A prison for Sora’s unruly free spirited nobody. 

I had watched as Roxas developed, drawing his time with Axel and Xion--that was her name--with my crayons in my sketchbook. I told Riku yesterday that Roxas had left the organization, and where he could find him. I knew that Roxas was growing a mind and heart of his own, and he wanted answers. 

Was it the right thing to do? I wasn’t sure, but my guilt and need for forgiveness from Sora kept my path stepping ever forward on this goal. But now, I wondered, would Roxas forgive me too? 

“He’s going to get himself killed. If that happens….Sora will never wake up.” Riku had said sadly, his hand pressed against the glass of Sora’s flower pod.

After that, he left quickly, hunting Roxas.

Roxas...now that you’ve started to become your own person, you’ve barely begun to live. I reached out a hand to the glass of Sora’s flower pod. “How did I get all of you into this mess?” My eyes felt wet, my vision blurred. Were these...tears?

When Riku returned, he wasn’t the handsome boy with the distant aquamarine eyes. He was tall and filled with darkness. He kept his hood up to not scare us with his new appearance. Xion and Roxas would sacrifice everything for Sora. It seemed that Riku would too.


	6. Conflicted

The memories came more easily now that Roxas was with us. But Roxas, he didn’t have a choice like Xion did. It felt wrong. Roxas was unknowingly trapped in a simulation of this town, a mask of fake memories and lies of a summer vacation trapping him from the truth. He should have a choice, shouldn’t he? It would be only a few more days, and Roxas would be gone. I stared at him as he slept, dreaming of Sora, or rather remembering Sora’s memories. I gently plucked them from his mind one by one as they came. I did this every night, and disappeared before he woke. He looked so harmless and peaceful as he slept. And yet Riku had to give in to the darkness just to best him. He really was something. I frowned. He had the right to know. I could do that for him, at least.

I hijacked the data and made my plans. And then I went to see him.

“Huh!?” Roxas skidded to a half where he had been chasing after his friends in Twilight Town. He hadn’t seen me coming, and almost ran right into me. 

I smiled reassuringly and greeted him. “Hello, Roxas.”

“Uh...hi.”

I looked around, to make sure I wasn’t followed. I wasn’t sure how long I could go undetected. I had to make my visits short. 

“And you are--?”

I held up my hand to him and he stopped talking. There wasn’t enough time for proper introductions. Who I was didn’t matter anyway. 

“I wanted to meet you. At least once.”

“Me?’ Roxas asked.

“Yes. You!” he honestly had no idea how special he was. Roxas scratched his hair in confusion, and I figured I shouldn’t press my luck. I turned and walked away before I could be detected by DiZ. I needed a safer way to explain things. Somewhere not out in the open.

The next day I had prepared a small extra scene in the data Twilight Town. I reached out when Roxas was unsuspecting, and took him there.

“Huh?” He looked around. It was mostly all white. I just needed to talk to him, so I didn’t spend any time on making the room fancy.

“My name is Naminé.” I said.

He just stared at me, accepting me with a look that said he thought he was in a dream.

“Roxas, do you remember your True Name?” I asked. If he could remember Sora, explaining all this would be much easier.

Then a strong hand grabbed my arm. I looked over as I was pulled up, it was Riku.

“Say no more, Naminé.” he said in his new deep voice. He was so tall now, but I knew it was still him. How had he found me so quickly? Had it scared him, thinking Xion would choose the other way? Is this why he wanted ignorance for Roxas? Or maybe, he didn't want Roxas to have that same burden of choice. But was ignorance really bliss? The anger and confusion Roxas had exhibited in the past few days told me that maybe it wasn’t. I couldn’t let him fade away with his last moments being tormented with questions.

“But if no one tells him, Roxas will--”

“It’s best he doesn’t know the truth.” Riku cut me off. Riku opened a dark corridor and shoved Roxas through, putting him back into his Twilight Town simulation.

I had to try again.

I hung my drawings of him with his friends on the walls of the data version of the old mansion we stayed in. And then I lured Roxas there. 

“This is...me? And Axel’s here too.” Roxas said, looking at one of my drawings. Axel had found out our plan recently, and had been trying to hijack the data as well, trying desperately to tell his friend he was trapped, that he had to wake up from this fake dream.

“You are best friends.” I explained. Poor Roxas, he couldn’t even remember. What had we done to him? A flashback of Sora at the top floors of castle oblivion swam into my mind. Sora hadn’t even remembered his friends by then either. Would I ever be forgiven for my crimes?

“Very funny.” Roxas said. He didn’t believe me.

“Don’t you wanna know the truth?” I pressed, “About who you really are?”

We talked while he continued to examine all my pictures. It felt good to finally confess to what I did to Sora. Even if Roxas didn’t entirely understand what I was saying. It felt good to be with Roxas. Like I was with Sora. Like I was with a friend from long ago, even if we were new to each other. We talked across the table, and it felt natural, like we were always meant to be friends.

I answered his questions, told him everything he asked. But then he asked something that hurt my heart the most.

“I think I’ve been running away from the question I really wanna ask. What’s gonna happen to me now? Just--tell me that. Nothing else really matters anymore.”

“You are--” but I was cut off. DiZ had retaken control over the data I’d hijacked. I ran to open a dark corridor and dove through. There wasn’t much time.

When I returned to the room where Roxas was, DiZ and Riku were already there. Roxas had to know the truth. Why was it so hard to just give him that? What had they been telling him? He deserved to know! If he had to go, he should be able to make his own choice and go willingly.

“Roxas! Nobodies like us are only half a person. You won’t disappear! You’ll be whole!”

“I’ll...disappear?”

“No further outbursts!” DiZ grabbed me and started to drag me back into the dark corridor.

“No! You won’t disappear! You’ll--” but DiZ clapped his hand over my mouth. Roxas ran towards me and a flashback of replica Riku hit my mind, I saw him running toward me to protect me simultaneously, and my heart ached with sorrowful pain and longing. Would I never truly be allowed to make new friends?

Riku stepped in Roxas’ way, cutting him off. He was so tall now and with such a dark presence, it stopped Roxas in his tracks.

I squirmed and yanked DiZ’s hand away from my mouth. 

“Roxas! We will meet again. And then we can talk about everything. I may not know it’s you, and you may not know it’s me. But we will meet again. Someday soon. I promise!”

“Let her go! Naminé!” I heard him shout as the dark corridor closed around us.

In the end, Roxas chose to go back to Sora too. Perhaps what I told him did ease his confusion. Or perhaps it only made him struggle with having a choice. Either way, his summer vacation was over.


	7. Forgiven

Sora was completed now. But Riku was too stubborn, ashamed, and prideful to go see him. All those days spent waiting at Sora’s side, the hurt in his eyes as he held his hands to the glass flower pod wishing and wishing for his friend to open his eyes, and now he wouldn’t even go see him. He let Sora run off with his friends Donald and Goofy without a word. Riku confused me sometimes.

My work is done. But now, with Sora’s mind corrected and his memories fixed, Sora had forgotten me. I was so foolish. How could I ask someone for forgiveness who couldn’t remember me? Maybe Riku’s relief was enough. 

But Axel, poor Axel. I tried to tell him that Roxas is with Sora now, that he’s whole. But it wasn’t good enough for Axel. And deep down, I knew why. Roxas had gone through so many experiences that he had begun to start to grow his own heart, become his own person. He may be part of Sora, but Roxas was also forever intertwined with the heart of his friend Axel as well. And now, Sora couldn’t remember those memories they had shared together.

“Let’s go.” Riku said. I stared down at the ground. Axel frowned, leaning on the fence and staring out over the hill at Twilight Town below as Sora disappeared with Donald and Goofy in the distance.

“Go where?” Axel asked wryly. “It’s not like we have homes to return to.” He turned and looked at Riku. “We don’t exist, remember?”

“Yes it’s true,” I started to say, “We may not have homes. But there is some place I want to go. And--someone I want to see.” I said, looking down at my drawing of Sora and Roxas holding hands.

“So, you think you might let us go?” Axel asked Riku. “I know you’re here to get rid of us, but…”

My jaw dropped. Was I that expendable? “DiZ wants to get rid of me!?” I stared up at Riku. He still wore the hood over his changed face.

“Go.” He said simply, releasing us. My heart melted. He could be almost scary when he was determined to go after something, but he was also unfailingly kind. 

“You sure about this?” asked Axel.

“I owe you both.” Riku explained.

“For what?” I was shocked. Everything I had done, I had done for myself. For my own selfishness, for my own atonement, for my own ridiculous wishes--the wishes of a nobody.

“Castle oblivion. You helped us.” Riku replied. I looked back down at my drawing in shame, not able to meet his eyes. Yes, I had turned on the organization and changed my mind, going to meet Sora and admitting what I had done to him. But, I would hardly have called that help, considering I got everyone into that mess in the first place.

“Heh. You don’t have to tell me twice!” Axel said, opening a dark corridor to disappear into.

Axel waited with the corridor open, and I realized he was waiting for me. 

“Thank you.” I said to Riku, realizing this act of letting us go was showing he had given me forgiveness. I was finally forgiven. I was finally free.


End file.
